In respect of a conventional driving support system using a camera, detection of an obstacle or an approaching vehicle is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication Nos. 9-240397 and 7-93693.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 9-240397 (hereinafter referred to as “the first conventional example”) discloses an annunciator for a vehicle running at the side rear. This annunciator detects, on the basis of a camera image taken in the side rear region of the self-vehicle, a moving body present in an adjacent lane and also detects whether or not a white line is present in detecting a moving body, so as to detect another vehicle by integrating the results of these detection. Thus, closeness between the self-vehicle and another vehicle is judged, so that a driver can be informed when there is a possibility of excessive closeness.
Alternatively, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 7-93693 (hereinafter referred to as “the second conventional example”) discloses an object detector for a vehicle. This is an object detector for a vehicle capable of correctly distinguishing an object such as a vehicle from a figure or pattern drawn on the road so as to accurately detect the object. As a characteristic of the structure, the movement of an edge point of an object in an image is measured by apparent travel speed measuring means as if it were three-dimensional movement on the road and the measured movement and the speed of the vehicle is compared by object judgment means so as to discriminate the object.